Violinists: Second Fiddle, con Brio

Violinist Alexander Schneider is no
dazzling virtuoso. "After I first heard Heifetz, I cried for a week,"
he says. Nor, when he conducts an orchestra, is he a prima donna of the
podium. Frequently, in fact, he is not even on the podium, preferring
to lead unobtrusively from within the ranks with a toss of his head and
a wave of his bow. Nor, as an intermittent member of the Budapest
Quartet for more than 35 years, has he ever sawed away on anything but
the No. 2 violin part. In short, he has made a career of playing...